Where To Find the New Intellectuals?
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All right, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Secular Foxhole podcast. Today, our guest is Stuart Margolis. I hope I pronounced that correct. You did. And he is affiliated with the Andrean Institute. Hello, Stuart. Hi. I should clarify, I was. I recently retired. Oh, I see. I see. I see. So I'm totally just speaking for myself here. Oh, very well. Very well. The reason I had you on...

is you wrote a great Substack article called Where to Find the New Intellectuals. And I think a lot of people, not just objectivists, are wondering where, yeah, where can we find kindred souls, kindred spirits? And because it's, I believe the society is becoming more tribal. Absolutely. So can you delve into the gist of your article for me?

Yeah, I'm happy to. Yeah, I think that our society is becoming more tribal and I think more anti-intellectual. There's always been an anti-intellectual streak in America, but I think it's getting worse. So I think it's a real challenge to figure out where, you know, Ayn Rand coined the term the new intellectual and one of her nonfiction collections is titled that. And

As I said, I worked for the Ayn Rand Institute previously for many, many years. And one of their primary goals is to reach new intellectuals and also create new intellectuals. That's their Ayn Rand University program and all. And I think certainly in the initial years of the Institute and I think the objectivist movement in general, sort of by default, we always assumed that those new intellectuals would be found on the right.

We would, you know, go to conservative groups to speak. We would target conservatives for donations. But increasingly, I think, over the last 20 years and especially over the last 10, this anti-intellectualism on the right, I think, makes it increasingly difficult to find those people where we had hoped to find them. And I think that it would behoove us to look at

elsewhere, to look, I hate to use the word on the left, but just places other than the right, people that don't think of themselves as conservative or don't think of themselves as on the right or Republican. I think there's a lot of people that are independent that, or maybe even, you know, did vote Democrat or whatever, but they don't

They have a certain intellectual curiosity that we should be tapping into because Ayn Rand is incredibly intellectual and appeals to a wide variety of people, not just...

Stuart, have you looked into the work of Robert Trosinski about symposium and the liberal, the classical liberals? Yeah, and I think he's absolutely right. I think there are still, it's a small group, but there are still classical liberals that would consider themselves on the left, would consider themselves liberal. But at this point in the culture, I think objectivists have a lot more in common with them than with liberals.

you know, say a MAGA Republican who has bought into this cult of personality. And, you know, when you try and discuss ideas, they just, they're unable to. Yeah.

Yeah, and I have always been against anarchists and people who are against the state as such. I'm for the state, but a minimal state protecting our individual rights. But how about the small L libertarians that are not anarchists, if there are any, they are left? I'm sure there are some. Unfortunately, I think the libertarian movement as such... Have they been cooped by like a MAGA version of that too, or...?

Yeah, they really have, from my understanding. There's a lot of people that have decided, well, we have to have a strong authority figure to get to where we want to go, which makes no sense to me. I'm working on an article for my subsec right now, which is quoting the famous Vietnam War era quote we had to...

destroy the town in order to save it. And, uh, I think that's kind of the mentality. It's like, well, we have to destroy all of our liberties in order to get to a free society. And I don't think it works that way. Yeah. I think that record is a spotty at best. Um, um,

Well, let's see. Let me jump around my questions here. Sure. And I didn't have this written down, but I just thought of this a little while ago. Ayn Rand is, let's just say she's in the Aristotelian school of thought, if you will. And Aristotle wrote on friendship. Do you know specifically or in general what he did say about friendship? Yeah.

I have read a little bit and I liked it, but I, I certainly, it was long enough ago. I wouldn't dare. Um, but I, I think he did have a very, um, positive and correct, essentially view of friendship. Yeah. I think at this point, our, at this point, our viewers are listeners to, uh, Aristotle's views on friendship, uh, for that. But, um,

I think that you talked about there's such an epistemological confusion today about left, right, liberal, conservative, freedom, everything. And I think that's a deliberate assault by progressives.

Do you have the same view or what is your view? I mean, I think there has been a concerted attack on, yeah, on reason and on epistemology. The irony to me is it absolutely came from the left, from the progressives, from, you know, what we would identify as the left part of the spectrum. But many of those tactics have now been adopted by the right.

So there was always problems with the left-right divide trying to classify Ayn Rand. I mean, she was vehemently in favor of a woman's right to abortion. She was anti-draft. She did not share all the issues.

typical conservative views of her day, she still classified herself as being on the right. Because at the time, at least when she started writing, they were the more pro-capitalist, pro-freedom side. I don't know that that's true anymore. I wish it were, but from the evidence I'm seeing, I don't see that. Yeah, I agree. I agree.

I think that especially the Fox News types, they're blaming liberalism for all of today's problems when it's liberalism died, I guess, long ago. My definition of liberalism is reason, individualism, capitalism, the founding principles of the United States. They've been whitewashed for decades now.

Ever since the 60s when the student radicals took over, I guess.

Yeah, they've been misrepresented or ignored or blacklisted or whatever, all of the above. And so for me, conservative intellectual is a contradiction. But, you know, I agree. I mean, there were a few intellectuals that I respected didn't didn't agree with everything, but they've been so marginalized now that they really have no voice in the current Republican Party.

So now is that as a specific, maybe it's more to be fundamental and talking about ideas, but this, I think it was you, Blev, that mentioned it to me one time, and I don't agree on everything and don't follow everything, but this, what is called bull work or bull...

Yeah. Where would you position them? Are they like a small fringe in a not positive way, but they are not MAGA or this on the bandwagon on that. What everything Trump is doing is so-called right as the so-called leader. I mean, it had been almost a cult following. They are going against that. But what do they want instead?

I mean, I don't think they're nearly as well-defined as we would be as objectivists, but I've read some of their stuff, and certainly they're much more aligned with us than MAGA. They at least are attempting to use logic and reason, and it's not all just these emotionalist arguments. If I can bring up a recent example, I posted a...

I reposted, I guess, an article by my former ARI colleague, Agostina Vergara-Sidd, on the Venezuelan refugees that Trump wants to send back to Venezuela. That's appalling. These are people that escaped one of the most horrific dictatorships on the planet to even think about sending them back. Same thing as, you know, when Dr. Leon Pico stand up for Elian Gonzalez. I will never forgive him for doing that to communist Cuba.

Yeah. No, it's horrible to send back someone who had the bravery and the foresight to get out of that horrible situation. To send them back is just unspeakable. And there were a couple of so-called objectivists who jumped on the comments and were like, oh, you know, there's Venezuelan gangs, you know, doing this and that. And complete collectivist approach, first of all. And then other people jumped on the comments and pointed out that all of these stories that they were referencing had been

completely debunked. They were made up nonsense like they're eating the cats and dogs in Springfield. Just total emotionalist, just didn't happen. And it doesn't matter. Then you point to the objective facts and they're like, oh, yeah, well, you can't trust the liberal media. It must be true because I feel it's true. And when you get people that are calling themselves objectivists who are taking that approach, that is scary to me. Very much so.

Returning to your article. It's all right. I wanted to cover all these things. Again, it's a very good article. And I appreciated the fact that you mentioned the progress movement, if you will. Can you go on about that for a bit?

A little bit, yeah. I think one of the few positive things that I see in the culture right now is this new progress studies. And I mentioned the Roots of Progress, which is a fairly new group founded by Jason Crawford. And I've known Jason for decades.

25 years at least, back when he was a campus club coordinator. I mean, I was the coordinator. He was the campus club student. He's so bright. I mean, he is. He was incredibly bright and talented. I knew it back then. And he is...

He's proven himself. The whole family. The whole family, actually. Yeah, the Crawfords are a very smart bunch. That's true. But I think that what they're doing, and he's an objectivist. I think a lot of the people involved in the movement are, but I don't think that you have to be. No. But their focus on the efficacy of man and man's use of reason to improve his life is

And that progress is possible and it's not inevitable, but if you give...

people freedom, then, you know, they will use their minds and they will make great things happen. And that's the kind of optimism that we need to see in the culture. And I don't see any of that in sort of the mainstream conservative movement. It's all doom and gloom. You know, America is a hellscape. The liberals have destroyed everything. And it's just not true. And it's also not useful in creating a better future, I think.

Yeah, very well said. Very well said. I also want to mention another, I guess, I'm assuming he's objectivist, Blake Scholl of Boom Supersonic. That's another spectacular guy.

And absolutely. Yeah. And incredible. And Blake also was a campus club kid and I knew him back then and, and always knew he was going to do great things, but had no idea it would be,

What he did do. I think it's amazing. And I'm very happy for him. So the overall point I want to make, and you guys can chime in. There are always, no matter how gloomy it looks out there, there's always currents going the other way. I interrupt you now, Blair. It's like the great campus club magazine, Undercurrent.

Right, Dan. That's a great word, too. That's a great word. There are always undercurrents. Yeah. So, yes, there's always undercurrents flowing the other way. And I've mentioned this a lot lately. When I began reading Miss Rand, I was 24-ish. This was late, like 1979. And ever since then, I've been a flame spotter myself.

And I'm sure you know the reference in Atlas about that. Oh, absolutely. And I am bragging, but I've introduced like 45 people to her ideas, the novels. That's worth bragging about. That's fantastic. And all but one said, thank you. You know, they, you know, they were so. That's a great achievement there. And I want to do a little comment on that also. I was in my,

mid-teens in 85 when the institute started and sent like to Mike Berlin and we started a club in Gothenburg and we were at the book fair and we got permission to translate works into Swedish and

I mean, I was more political, but I was coming from, you could say, small L libertarian or the so-called conservative. But they called themselves moderate. But I didn't see that they had any base. So I want to see the liberal things in a context. So then it was like youth or you could say university that was on academia that was even more liberal. But even there it was different fractions and so on.

But it was not much that you came from the so-called conservative groups. It was more liberal. So it's interesting how the word liberal in other parts of the world is really meaning liberal like Latin in freedom. But in America, it become so-called leftist. And that's, I think, it's time to take that back.

I agree. I agree. Very much so. Very much so. And then, of course, you could debate and just have an intellectual discussion about is it from left to right or is it more like a circle or is it this, you know, anti-for the individual or other things like that. It's individualist collectivist. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's my... Here's my line, I guess. Yeah. Stuart,

I want to thank you for coming on the show. I know it's a short live, but I, I, again, I, your, your article struck me so much. I wanted to talk to you about it and I appreciate you coming on. Tell us, tell us where we can find you on the web.

Well, I have started this Substack. I think if you go to Substack and put in my name, Stuart, S-T-E-W-A-R-T, and then it's Margolis, M-A-R-G-O-L-I-S. Oh, it's on the screen if anyone's watching. But yeah, I think it'll pop right up and you can subscribe for free. Of course, you can also...

subscribe, give me money. That's always nice. But I want the readership first and foremost. I'm also on Facebook, although I'm not posting as much there. But yeah, those are the two places you can find me. Do you have a title for your sub stack or is it just under your name? Right now it's just under my name. I am thinking of maybe calling it bias towards reason, but I haven't

I haven't decided for sure right now. It's just undermining. Yeah. And now when you're talking and we could talk about that in future, got some ideas what we could do together because it's great to have you as a guest and your article is very important and how you could present yourself and you have lots of experience.

So I see that when you're talking about support. So you could support this show also going to like truefans.fm and follow our podcast and become a fan. And then you could stream Satoshi's part of a Bitcoin and also send it Boostergram. And then we could share it with our guests.

So I have some ideas to it that we could talk about in the future, what we could do. Because I see lots of classical liberals and especially objectivists that have a message out there and they could spread it now thanks to technology and still freedom of expression. So we could do that. And with podcast and RSS and podcasting 2.0, we can't be deplatformed. We could speak out.

Of course, we always have to take consequences of our ideas and what we are saying. But if we could reach the new intellectuals out there,

in different ways. So thanks again, Blair, for doing these questions and reaching out to Stuart. And hopefully we'll do a follow-up in the near future. So thanks again. Keep writing, Stuart. Keep writing. I will. I'm going to be posting at least once a week. I've got lots to say. There's a lot going on in the world. It's hard to keep up. It is hard to keep up. All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, our guest today has been Stuart Margolis.

Stuart, thanks for manning the foxhole with us. You're very welcome. It's been fun. Thanks, Stuart. Thank you.